


Crossed Wires

by Im_The_Doctor (Bofur1)



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Abduction, Advantages, Anger, Banter, Bitterness, Blindness, Bondage, Boys in Chains, Breaking Things, Canon-Typical Violence, Captivity, Ceiling Vents, Climbing, Communication, Deductions, Domestic Violence, Enemies, Energy Drain, Eventual Happy Ending, Glasses, Handcuffed Together, Hanging Upside-Down, Imprisonment, Insults, Mid-Canon, Misuse of Special Techniques, Mystery, Nausea, Nicknames, Optimism, Power Imbalance, Powerlessness, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Public Humiliation, Rescue Missions, Revenge, Rude Awakenings, Strategy & Tactics, Stress Relief, Technology, Threats of Violence, Truce, Unconsciousness, Wire Play, complaining, working together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 16:15:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5055352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bofur1/pseuds/Im_The_Doctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two unlikely enemies awake to find themselves stripped of their weapons and chained together in an unfamiliar room. Is their captor just as much a stranger as their surroundings or is it someone they don't expect?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crossed Wires

Trailbreaker felt himself moving—sort of. It was a slow, dragging pace, even slower than usual, but somehow even at small increments it was hurting like the Pit, worse than his hangover the first time he tried Nightmare Fuel. Whatever was dragging him wasn’t being too gentle.

His visor finally activated, but what he saw through fuzzy optics wasn’t too helpful; he had half of his face pressed into a cold metal floor. He let out a surprised grunt as he was partially lifted and then someone spoke.

“Oh, you’re awake. Okay.”

With that he was dropped back to the floor, yelping as sharp tingles of pain drove through his frame.

“Where—?” he gasped, curling up small.

“I don’t know. I woke up just a minute ago.”

Finally Trailbreaker found the strength to lift his face, but when he laid optics on his companion he was unsure if he was hallucinating.

“Yeah, it’s me. Surprise!” Thundercracker sneered sarcastically before casting a longing glance toward the door on the far side of whatever room they were in. Trailbreaker started to push himself up and then noticed the heavy chain unraveled on the floor between him and the Decepticon. In the middle of the chain, another link secured them to the wall nearby.

“What in the Allspark…?” Trailbreaker muttered in disbelief.

“Don’t ask me. I’d never willingly chain myself to _you_ ,” Thundercracker grumbled, throwing himself down as far from Trailbreaker as the chain would allow and glaring at the door as though that would make it approach them.

Trailbreaker didn’t respond as he slowly sat up, folded his hands and vented, compartmentalizing his pain. “I am trying really, _really_ hard to find a silver lining here. Umm…”

“I’m not Starscream?” Thundercracker supplied, surprising Trailbreaker into a bark of incredulous laughter.

“I guess that works. And I’m not any of the Minibots.” Nonetheless, Trailbreaker attempted to surreptitiously go for the blaster he kept stored on his hip, but the chain rattled and drew taut, giving him away. Thundercracker shook his helm.

“Nuh-uh. Yours are gone, mine are gone.” Thundercracker pointed toward the door and the blasters leaning tauntingly against it. “Over there. I don’t know who did this, but they’ve thought of everything.”

Sighing crossly, Trailbreaker threw up his free hand and demanded, “So why haven’t you just transformed and taken off by now? I’m sure with momentum in jet mode, you could rip this chain out of the wall.”

“Somehow my T-cog’s been damaged,” Thundercracker grumbled. “Like I said, everything’s been taken care of. What about _you_? Do you have anything to offer?”

Trailbreaker hesitated, considering. His alternate mode could barely get up the momentum to make sharp mountain turns, much less tear thick chains like these apart. Even if he did have anything worth offering, dare he offer it to Thundercracker of all mechs? So far the Con had been… accommodating, but it wasn’t like he had a choice.

“Not much,” he answered at last, gingerly massaging his chamfron. “You know what I can do: force fields aren’t any good here and magnawheels would only keep the energon flowing while we wait to be rescued.”

“By who?”

Trailbreaker rolled his optics, glad that his visor kept Thundercracker from seeing. “Well, _surely_ you called to beg for help from your almighty master? Thought to deliver me as a hostage while I was unconscious?”

“Oh, hey, I hadn’t thought of that; that’s a great idea!”

Glaring at him, Trailbreaker yanked hard on the chain so he could bring his hand to his audial. “Hound, do you read? Mirage? Prime? It’s Trailbreaker. I need an assist.” Static whistled back at him and he frowned deeply. “There’s some kind of dampening field, I think.”

“Or when you got conked out, the blow crossed a few wires. Not that I’d know the difference,” Thundercracker jeered.

“Course you wouldn’t; your CPU wouldn’t mind a defrag either!”

The two mechs glared at each other for a minute or two and then Trailbreaker glanced toward the door. From here it looked to be thick steel, but surely his blaster could penetrate it. He squinted at the weapon leaning against the door, wondering if there was some prompting mechanism he had forgotten about.

If only he had immense strength like Brawn, or magnetic powers like Windcharger, or could detach his hands like Hauler, or could remotely access radio frequencies like Hound or Blaster. But no. He was Trailbreaker and in this current situation, he was practically useless. He also just had to be stuck with a useless Decepticon.

 _Find the good in this situation_ , he chided himself, drawing his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. Neither of them had their weapons. Well…that meant a ceasefire, though it wasn’t voluntary. And the comm. links were out, meaning Thundercracker couldn’t act on the ‘great idea’ of giving him to Megatron. Thundercracker’s T-cog was damaged, so he couldn’t escape and leave Trailbreaker here to rust on his own.

Yet for every pro, there was a con. Despite his carefully-constructed reputation as a ‘cheerleader’, Trailbreaker wasn’t feeling particularly cheery right now. He shouldn’t feel the need to put on a guise for a Decepticon, but he _certainly_ didn’t want to look like he was losing hope in his fellow Autobots’ ability to rescue him.

His thoughts were shattered by a thunderous boom. Jerking his gaze upward, Trailbreaker watched in mild disbelief as Thundercracker backed further out into the room and then flung himself helm first into the wall.

As the Decepticon stumbled backward, Trailbreaker smirked and mocked, “Playing Ramjet now, are we?”

“I don’t see you doing anything better,” Thundercracker argued drolly, doubling his fists and charging a third time, coming away from the wall looking dazed and frustrated.

“I’m sitting calmly and waiting for rescue,” Trailbreaker explained, suppressing his glee at observing his companion’s ineffective pastime. “How is that worse than self-concussing?”

The Decepticon whirled around, dropping his hand in an obvious attempt to resist rubbing the new dent in his helm. Throwing himself to the ground with a sharp clank, he hissed, “Get recycled, you bootlegged ornament!”

Any previous assumptions about a truce being a good idea vanished. Trailbreaker sprang to full size, ignoring his momentarily wobble. “Are we gonna go, wingnut?! If you _really_ want to, I’ll take those fancy wings of yours and make a kite with ’em!”

Thundercracker snarled, twisting his arm so the chain looped around it. Before Trailbreaker could wonder what this would accomplish, he was being slammed to the floor, temporarily stunning his sensory net. Red pain alerts flashed behind his optics and he groaned softly, wishing he was righting himself faster than he was.

“You were saying?” Thundercracker asked stonily.

Trailbreaker pushed the upper half of his frame up, fragments of cybre-glass tinkling onto his forearms. Thundercracker had shattered his visor. Wonderful. Pulling off what remained of his visor before the glass penetrated his sensitive optics, he sank back down and rested his face against his arms, letting the pain from his new helm injury take its course.

—

“Trailbreaker. Trailbreaker?”

“Hound?” the mech mumbled. His entire frame felt heavy and resisted his attempts to move.

“Nope, still me,” Thundercracker informed him. “Your Terran-tainted partner hasn’t come, lucky me. But I thought of somethin’. You could use your magnawheels to get up there, see where it goes.”

Finally summoning the energy to turn onto his back, Trailbreaker followed Thundercracker’s pointing finger. It was almost impossible to see without his visor, but after recalibrating his optic lenses to twice the magnification, he could make out a vent above them.

It was then that he recalled the reason his visor was broken. “I don’t give a flyin’ frag about the vent!” he barked, using the wall to push himself upright. “You’re the flyer; get up there yourself!”

“What’s your malfunction?” Thundercracker demanded, rattling the chain still wrapped around his arm. “I told you: my T-cog’s been damaged! You’re not gonna give up a chance to escape just cos I cracked your shades, are you? That’d be stupid and inferior—in fact, just what I’d expect out of a _usele_ —”

It wasn’t often that Trailbreaker truly felt rage, but hearing someone else, an enemy, voice his lack of worth…He was certain he felt something internal snap. Lashing out, he seized a groove of Thundercracker’s chest armor and twisted it slightly askew, bellowing, “ _I’ve_ got the force fields, _I’ve_ got the magnawheels—you, you’ve got _nothing!_ Who’s the useless one between the two of us?!”

Thundercracker leaned back with a wolfish, pained grin. “And you just proved my point.”

His anger subsiding, Trailbreaker considered what the downed jet meant and shunted him away as it sank in: was that some twisted, Decepticon-ish way of _encouraging_ him?

Rubbing at his chest, Thundercracker probed, “So are you going up to the vent? It’s probably our only way out.”

How had it happened that Thundercracker was now the more optimistic of their unenthusiastic partnership? The thought made Trailbreaker feel slightly shaken.

“…Agreed,” he huffed at last. “I’ll need a bit of leeway.” As Trailbreaker focused power to his magnawheels, Thundercracker came as close as he could, letting the chain relax and pool near the Autobots’ feet.

“Up I go,” Trailbreaker announced reluctantly, fastening his feet to the wall. Hopefully the power currently being used on his self-repair systems wouldn’t make too much of a dent in his reserves. If his slaggin’ fuel-consumption cost them the trip to the vent, he really would be worthless. Not that he had doubts about that. Ex-venting nervously, he took his first steps.

“It must be eerie to you wheel-bounds, defying gravity,” Thundercracker commented in a condescending tone as Trailbreaker threw his arms out for balance.

“Don’t start picking on the ‘groundpounder’ just because you got your wings clipped,” Trailbreaker shot back as he methodically removed one foot from the wall and placed it on the ceiling. Despite his comeback, he did find it disconcerting to be dangling upside down like a bolt-bat. He had never seen the creatures back on Cybertron, but Hound had described them in full detail.

One of the few but weighty downsides to having an outdoors mech for a partner and best friend.

“Sure you aren’t going to let me get all the way up here, just to pull me down and break my back?” Trailbreaker called, trying to ignore his equilibrium stabilizers going haywire. (This was why he rarely used his magnawheels! This was why he ignored all the compliments he received because of them!)

“Just give me an excuse,” Thundercracker snapped, stretching his arm and walking as far out from the wall as their bonds would allow. Trailbreaker forcefully decided that he could trust that Thundercracker’s words were unfounded since he’d made such a big deal about this chance for rescue.

“What d’you think your trine will say when you _walk_ to base?” Trailbreaker asked, chuckling lightly.

Thundercracker growled. “I don’t care what they think.”

“Really? There are rumors that your spark’s not really in your cause…” Trailbreaker’s vocals went up by the slightest note at the end, making it more of a question. He knew he was treading on delicate ground—both in the literal and metaphorical sense.

“Right back at you,” Thundercracker grumbled. “But whether or not you believe the fact that I’m _completely_ loyal the cause, proving all your rumors wrong, me and Starscream and Skywarp are getting on just fine.”

Trailbreaker raised his eyebrows as he stilled, about two feet from the vent, and doubled over, worming his left fingers between the vent slats. “Try again, Crackerjack, and make it a little more convincing.”

“Shut up! Primus, I wish I could shoot you!” Thundercracker complained.

“Well, too bad,” Trailbreaker taunted, his smile more of a grimace as he concentrated on tugging the covering out of place. To his astonishment, the screws were already loose, falling out easily, but the covering itself wasn’t budging. “So…” he grunted, “they’re givin’ you grief?”

Thundercracker scoffed. “Not anymore. Skywarp pushed me down a flight of stairs and I landed on Starscream. Ha! Totally humiliated him in front of Megatron and Soundwave. As for Skywarp, I put him in his place later, when the time was right.”

The pride was obvious in the Winger’s voice, Trailbreaker noted half-mindedly as he continued to yank on the cover, growing more and more perplexed. Was there one persistent screw on the other side that he wasn’t seeing? Taking a risk, he magnified his optic lenses once more. His helm reacted with a fierce ache and a popup informed him that his magnawheels were falling to almost half of their capacity. He understood that he was divvying up his energy unwisely, but he could now see the problem—

“It’s welded on!” he exclaimed in dismay.

“What?!”

“This vent panel,” Trailbreaker repeated. “It’s welded on.”

A long pause. “When I find who did this to us, I’m gonna _kill_ them,” the Decepticon vowed ominously.

“Better yet,” Trailbreaker suggested, returning to his previous prying with renewed vigor and desperation, “we could stick ’em in here, give ’em a dose of their own— _sla-a-ag!_ ”

The howl burst out of him as the vent cover came loose without warning, the momentum wresting one of his weakening magnawheels from the roof. He flailed, his other foot slipping loose, and felt a brief rush of air around his frame. In this instance it was his worst fear coming true: he was falling.

Thundercracker barely had a chance to cry out a warning before Trailbreaker’s free hand shot out, seizing the side of the outlet he’d opened and narrowly sparing himself a painful reunion with gravity.

“Guess…guess it wasn’t welded _that_ well,” Trailbreaker gasped, pedaling air as he dropped the cover and latched onto the other side of the opening before shuttering his optics as a wave of dizziness caused his entire frame to wobble.

“Can you see what’s up there?” Thundercracker questioned impatiently.

“In case you didn’t notice, it’s a little eerie to us wheel-bounds, defying gravity,” Trailbreaker threw his earlier mockery back at him, trying to vent evenly. He silenced another popup about finding an energy source. “Give me a nanoklik.”

“Hurry up,” Thundercracker urged anyway.

Obeying with a purposefully noisy sigh, Trailbreaker used the grip he had to draw himself up, reaching through and bracing his elbows on the inside of the roofing so he could poke his helm through. Since his chest blocked almost the entirety of the vent gap, his optics created the only light; the darkness created fuzz in his vision. At the thought of fuzz, Trailbreaker remembered Sparkplug once saying he had needed to work on the ductwork in the house where he and Spike lived.

“You should’ve seen the filth up there,” the human had complained, wiping his hands on his pants as though they were still coated in the ductwork’s grime.

 _There’s no dust in here_ , Trailbreaker observed. _As though someone’s been up here recently…And that would explain the loose screws and the welding on the grate_.

He glanced to his left and found the same cleanliness, as well as something else—a slightly angled dent on the wall of the shaft. He was more interested in the tube of ductwork opposite. It had been torn, acutely sliced through by the edge of something wide. Near the slice he saw bundles of wiring.

“What?” Thundercracker hollered. “What’s up there?!”

“Looks normal to me. Well, almost,” Trailbreaker answered, his voice echoing down the tunnel. “There’s ductwork, wiring…Lemme see what this wiring goes to, maybe we can use it.”

Reaching out awkwardly so the left side of the opening dug into his underarm, Trailbreaker dug his hand into the tear and seized the wad of cabling, only to be stopped by a pained growl from his companion below.

“Sure, you have my permission to _rip my arm out of its socket_ , Autobot!”

Trailbreaker couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy; he’d forgotten that Thundercracker’s right arm was secured to his left. Just as Thundercracker was implying, the chain was as taut as possible. Aloud, however, he countered cheerfully, “Well, since it doesn’t have a weapon attached to it, you didn’t need that arm anyway!”

“Shut up and work!”

Lips compressed, Trailbreaker yanked at the wiring, hissing as it unraveled in his grip. Hopefully whatever it led to would still work. Feeding the wiring through the part of the vent still open, he reached for the next bundle, repeating the process.

“What’re you going to do with all that?” Thundercracker sneered. “Create a lasso and rustle up our weapons?”

“How ’bout I make a noose and strangle you with it instead?” Trailbreaker muttered, snatching at two more bundles and wrenching them in his frustration. He startled as he suddenly picked up a deep thrumming sound, but before he could inquire about it, the vibration subsided.

_“…Do you read me, Teebs? C’mon, please. Pick up, pick up…”_

Fumbling, Trailbreaker pressed his index finger into his audial, crying, “Hound?!”

_“Trailbreaker! Thank Primus you’re alright; you’ve been missing for forty-eight joors! What’s your location?”_

“I don’t know,” Trailbreaker admitted, warmth rising in his spark at the relief in his partner’s voice and at the muffled sounds of Mirage demanded coordinates in the background. “I got knocked out and lashed up in some random building…” Even as he spoke, Trailbreaker heard Thundercracker figuring out what was happening and trying to radio the other Decepticons.

_“I’ll get a fix on your location, Trailbreaker. Keep your comm. open!”_

“Will do,” Trailbreaker agreed, tugging on the rope of wiring to be sure it would hold. When he was fairly certain, he used it as a line to lower himself back toward the floor. It only gave way at the last few feet, causing him to land on his aft with a clunk.

“Can anyone read me?” Thundercracker was testing as Trailbreaker stood and approached, letting the chain relax. “Lord Megatron, are you there?”

Trailbreaker watched uneasily, privately hoping that no one would pick up the transmission. Thundercracker ex-vented in frustration, his hand and his wings both drooping slowly to his sides.

“They’re probably going to pick up your energy signature,” Trailbreaker blurted out. “Though hopefully _after_ we figure out the mystery.”

“What mystery?” Thundercracker asked defensively, unwilling to accept anything akin to reassurance from an Autobot.

“Well, when I was up in the ductwork, there was no dust,” Trailbreaker began, receiving a blank look. “That’s unusual.”

“I guess you’d be used to that, being a dustkicker,” Thundercracker muttered.

Trailbreaker glared, throwing his shoulders back. “And proud of it!” Under normal circumstances that would be a lie, but right now he’d much rather be his slow, ground-bound self than a flyer seemingly abandoned by his teammates. “ _Anyway_ , there wasn’t any dust up there and did you see how easily that cabling unraveled? I doubt it was done by a technician. Oh, and the ductwork was torn. It looked like it had gotten stabbed and sliced by the edge of something.”

Thundercracker glanced down and to the side, his wings twitching as he considered. Trailbreaker stared at them. As they shifted, they angled, seeming to leave short-lived rents in the air they passed through. It could just be a trick of his bad optics, but—

“Son of a blaster,” he said aloud, realization dawning. Miming vaguely what the tear had looked like with his hand, Trailbreaker demanded, “It looked like this. There was a dent on the opposite wall, exactly like it. Could they have been done _by wings_?”

Thundercracker frowned incredulously. “I guess. What are you hinting at?”

For a nanoklik Trailbreaker simply pressed his thumb and forefinger into his optics, alleviating some of the pressure built up behind them. Then he sighed. “It may be hard for you, Crackerjack, but _think_. You mentioned a certain pair of Wingers you got mad. You humiliated one of ’em, put a beatdown on the other…Making the connection now?”

Thundercracker’s mouth opened but no words left it.

“I take that as a yes.”

All at once Thundercracker lifted a hand to his audial, his usual deep voice rising to a Starscream-like screech: “Starscream! Skywarp! _I’m going to make your lives a living Pit!_ ” Then he tensed, going ramrod-straight. “Lord Megatron. I apologize—”

Trailbreaker winced on his companion’s behalf, but Thundercracker ignored him, listening attentively to whatever Megatron had to say.

“Oh. Thank you, Master,” Thundercracker said, sounding surprised and pleased as he signed off. Trailbreaker lifted an eyebrow questioningly and he declared, “Soundwave’s coming to get me. Skywarp and Starscream are in the med bay for—in Megatron’s words—‘betraying a fellow Decepticon.’”

Trailbreaker barked a laugh, shaking his helm in wonder. “If there’s one good thing about Megatron, it’s his distaste for turncoats.” He paused, tilting his helm questioningly, and then grinned when he heard the squeal of tires. “Oh. Looks like my ‘Terran-tainted’ partner is here.”

Sure enough, the door on the opposite side burst open, revealing Hound, Mirage, and Ratchet.

“Trailbreaker!” Ratchet called, striding toward him and kneeling to work at the cuff on his wrist. “Are you hurt?”

“A helm-ache from getting knocked out a couple times—and I need my visor replaced,” Trailbreaker replied, rotating his hand once his bonds had been broken. He rose to his feet, taking a few steps away from Thundercracker, who was staring expressionlessly down the barrel of Mirage’s blaster. When he felt Trailbreaker’s optics on him, Thundercracker returned his look before lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug.

“Do we fight now?”

Trailbreaker hesitated, taking his own weapon from Hound. After another nanoklik he made his decision, brought the blaster to bear and opened fire.

Splitting the chain and thus freeing Thundercracker from the wall.

“What are you doing?!” Hound demanded as Trailbreaker pivoted and headed for the door, his back completely turned to the Con.

“No reason to fight him, Hound. He knows we didn’t bring him here. Oh…” He set a hand on the edge of the door and glanced over his shoulder. “You _will_ slag ’em up for doing this to us, right, Crackerjack?”

Thundercracker pushed past Trailbreaker’s astonished comrades and picked up his own blaster, his face dark with a sinister smile. “Count on it. And if you ever call me Crackerjack again, I’ll break more than just your visor.”

**Author's Note:**

> I pulled up a list of Transformers, closed my eyes and clicked two random names, coming up with these two. I'm really glad I did; I love them both!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! Please comment and tell me what you thought :D I'd love to hear from you.


End file.
